Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Open Wide

Wide-open mouths aplenty in the only Art Davis-directed Bugs Bunny cartoon, “Bowery Bugs.” And finger gestures, too. They don’t move as wildly as in a Bob McKimson cartoon about this time, but the movement isn’t as restrained as in a Jones or Freleng Bugs.

Some drawings of Bugs have him with long, thin front teeth while others have him with shorter, chisel-shaped ones.
Emery Hawkins, Basil Davidovich, Bill Melendez and Don Williams are the credited animators.

5 comments:

This is both a very talkative cartoon and a very 'emotive' one, in that Bugs and Brody are full of arm gestures (and in the case of Bugs' early pleadings, foot gestures) where the action continues even as the dialogue goes on. If this had to be the lone Bugs cartoon for Davis, Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner, it wasn't a bad one to do and definitely had it's own feel that was apart from the other three units.

This was also the last cartoon the Davis unit made before it was disbanded (the final released cartoon from his unit, "Bye Bye Blackbeard" with Porky Pig, was made beforehand). Interesting that Davis should have used the model sheets for Bugs as McKimson's unit was using at the time. But yeah, this is definitely one of my favorite Bugs'.